About 2 years ago NetBeans Evangelist Tim Boudreau did a blog post that lambasted Eclipse. It was so bad, and inaccurate, that he had to take it down; must have been bad day.
It seems like Tim has had another bad day, as evident in a response to a blog post and comment on Donald Smith’s blog. Not sure why Tim feels it necessary to attack Eclipse? He is obviously very proud of NetBeans, so I appreciate the passion. Just not sure why the need to attack? Regardless, I do believe it is important to re-educate Tim on the facts about Eclipse.
First, let me say it is obvious NetBeans is an open source project; saying something to the contrary just wouldn’t make sense. Therefore I am sure Donald’s comment was in jest.
Tim seems to like to continue to spread the same FUD about Eclipse. For instance, a well used sound bite from Sun seems to be coming through with Tim’s comment:
‘Now contrast this with Eclipse, where project ownership goes to the highest bidder.’
This is just wrong and Tim knows better. Anyone can start a project at Eclipse; membership in the Foundation is not required and payment is not required. There are lots of examples, including Higgins, Mylar, Parallel Tools, DLTK, etc.
It also seems like Tim really doesn’t understand the true nature/power of Eclipse and open source projects that aren’t controlled by a single corporate entity. Take for instance his comment:
It’s a little bit amazing to me that this has yet to dawn on the various Eclipse distributions - that having a mission of differentiating yourself from…yourself is a monstrous waste of time.
Eclipse, Apache, Linux are all about providing a common platform that allows for value creation. I have lost track of the number of language IDEs, developer tools and general products that have been built on top of Eclipse. The key is that most of these products are not built as Eclipse projects and the large majority are not even remotely associated with IBM or the Eclipse Foundation. Tim, might call it a waste of time but it seems like a lot of people are making money doing it.
My favorite part is where Tim writes off Eclipse as a ‘ big flash in the pan’. In his post 2 years ago, I seem to remember he predicted that Eclipse would collapse in 2 years. By Tim’s prediction, Eclipse is about set to implode anytime now. However the statement ‘NetBeans was designed on the 20 year plan.’ just made me laugh; glad to hear you can think out that far.
I would also like to point out a personal pet peeve in the comment ‘The game was rigged that way from the start, and the price of lots of PR at the outset is eventual stagnation’. I can almost guarantee that Sun NetBeans marketing budget is larger than the Eclipse marketing budget. Their advertising budget alone is probably more than we spend on marketing in a year. The success of Eclipse is not based on PR but based on community and ISV adoption. As for stagnation, I leave that to the reader to decide but things like Mylar, Higgins, ATF are pretty damm cool to me.
Finally, Tim closes with a rather weird question of asking ‘Meritocracy or kleptocracy - which world would you *really* rather live in?’ I think he is insinuating Eclipse is a kleptocracy?. Gee, I wonder who is the dictator or who are the few that are benefiting from Eclipse? Makes me conclude that Tim is very misinformed about Eclipse or he is just spewing FUD. Regardless, my answer is ‘I live in a meritocracy and am I glad I work at Eclipse’.
Tim, lighten-up. Enjoy the NetBeans community, I am sure it is great. Eclipse is pretty great too.
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Posted by Ian Skerrett
